Sunday, December 12, 2010

I am not a baker.

I like savory things. Savoury, truth be told, since I think the extra vowel in the British spelling is sort of like an onomatopoeia for the palate. More layers to the word, more layers to the flavor. Even subtle layers, like an extra vowel you might not hear but somehow sense is present.

Lobster enchiladas? No problem.
Rack of lamb with rosemary and red wine reduction sauce? I could do it in my sleep.

Sugar cookies? Epic fail.

We produced the ugliest sugar cookies EVER today. They were tasty, mind you, but could my 6 and 3 year old cut them into anything resembling holiday shapes? That would be a resounding NO. We had to settle for green and red sugar sprinkled blobs.

My poor kids. They may never overcome the tragedy of their childhood.

I think I'll stick with coffee creme brulee. It's the only dessert I can produce with the desired result.

12 comments:

Oh my . . . I totally understand that whole sugar cookie thing. My greatest baking disasters have ALL been sugar cookies! The latest one happened because my sweet friend Amy is a huge University of Alabama fan. So, I bought an Alabama "A" cookie cutter. How hard could it be to make some cute Alabama cookies for her birthday? Well, not just hard . . . impossible. They were unbelievably ugly and just wrong on so many levels. Not to mention absolutely impossible to cut out. The cookie cutter would not "let go." Those cookies were lopsided, wiggly triangles with no real distinguishing characteristics to indicate "A" as opposed to any other letter, or shape, or anything. I thought icing would help. Wrong again. It turned out more hot pink than red because I ran out of food coloring. A total mess, really. I tried them and they tasted pretty good. They were just too ugly for anyone to want to try them. Except Amy. I think she felt like she had to since I spent eight hours making them.

I've been cooking from Cook's Illustrated for the past few months. It is 1,000% awesome. Not trying to be Billy Mayes, but you should check out the trial membership for their website. And yes, there's a no-fail sugar cookie recipe:

Is it possible to make sugar cookies that have a perfect balance of texture and flavor? After 50 batches and 1,200 cookies, we know the answer.

@ Rick: I love Cook's! In fact, I think my rack of lamb recipe is a Cook's Illustrated one. We use their big cookbook all the time. I'll have to look up sugar cookies. If I get ambitious enough to give it another try.

@ Lydia: Between the two of us, we might could set out a respectable meal. When we have people over for dinner and that expectant wait sets in after the main course I'm all: "Hey, do you want a little more wine?"